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Feds: If you mine or trade Bitcoin on your own, that’s totally cool

Cornering the Bitcoin market may be easier than cornering orange juice futures.

Paramount Pictures / Aurich Lawson

As it turns out, if you mine or trade Bitcoin “solely [for your own] purposes,” the United States Department of the Treasury doesn’t need you to register as a money transmitter as defined under the Bank Secrecy Act. Similarly, companies that invest in Bitcoin don’t need to register either.

A new four-page document published Thursday by the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has further clarified financial rules pertaining to Bitcoin.

In March 2013, FinCEN’s rules stipulated that “a person that creates units of convertible virtual currency and sells those units to another person for real currency or its equivalent is engaged in transmission to another location and is a money transmitter” and is therefore subject to federal regulations.